DescriptionWalt Disney made a career out of revolutionizing animation and filmmaking techniques, continuously pushing the boundaries of the artform while staying true to a vision of a family-friendly finished product. This visionary zeal seemed to reach its zenith in 1955 with the opening of Disneyland, the world’s first fully themed amusement park that, in many ways, felt like a liveable environment. By the 1960s, however, Disney had begun to once again grow restless, and turned his creative attentions to a much larger scale challenge: attempting to fix what was perceived as the “urban crisis” of the era in the United States. Building off the ideas, model concepts, and failures of previous urban planners, Disney sought to create a foolproof concept: design a futuristic city using technology and architectural techniques his team at WED Enterprises at learned at Disneyland, and build it on enough privately owned land that nobody could build an unwanted and unplanned development immediately beyond the city limits. The city was to be known as EPCOT (“Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow”), and it would be located in Orlando and Kissimmee, Florida. This study seeks to trace the history of EPCOT’s development and planning, but also to understand why EPCOT never came to be in the form it was originally designed as, arriving at a conclusion that for as foolproof as Disney’s plans seemed, there are some factors that are simply beyond the control of even the biggest dreamers, factors that force compromise and change even in the grandest, boldest ideas.